A. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to a ball delivery system and method, and more particularly to a ball delivery system where the axis of rotation of the ball delivered from the system can range from perpendicular to the direction of motion of the ball to parallel to the direction of motion.
B. Background of the Invention
A ball delivery system is a machine designed to release a ball in a particular direction towards a target. These machines can be useful for practicing sports that use balls, for example, tennis, baseball, ping pong, football or any other sport where a ball is used. The system essentially “throws” a ball to simulate the action of a ball being hit by a tennis racquet, a pitch by a baseball pitcher, or a football thrown by a quarterback. There are several reasons these machines are used. The machines can be used when a tennis partner or baseball pitcher are unavailable, for example. They can also be used to practice a particular action over and over again, for example to practice hitting a fastball many times.
There are two types of prior art ball delivery systems. One is a swinging arm delivery system and the other is a spinning wheel type delivery system. The swinging arm delivery system operates by swinging a mechanical arm with a ball at the end of it. The arm swings and releases the ball. Thus, the ball is “thrown” with a particular velocity and rotation in the direction of a target.
The spinning wheel delivery system operates by having two spinning wheels where the ball gets squeezed between them to be “thrown.”
Both of these types of delivery systems have disadvantages. One major disadvantage of both is that there is a limitation in that the axis of rotation of the ball delivered by the system cannot be quantitatively controlled and often must be perpendicular to the direction of motion of the ball. This limitation does not exist in other situations in real life sports, for example, a human pitcher pitching a baseball or a ball being hit with a tennis racquet. Real pitches in baseball don't necessarily have an axis of rotation perpendicular to the direction of travel. Therefore, with the existing pitching machines, a batter cannot practice for scenarios with an axis of rotation that, the orientation of which, can be quantitatively controlled.